The engineer you're relying upon is not the engineer the tech industry optimizes for. The tech industry wants engineers who are not overly concerned with how the business will utilize the fruits of their labor. Ask difficult questions or push back against management too hard, and you're on your way out the door before you finish saying "With all due respect..."
It's hard to imagine if you haven't experienced it yourself. You think it should work that way. You push for it, but unless you fall into the right, group you may as well be a fart in the wind.
engineers implement what they are told to do, and decisions are made in upper management level. very likely this direction came from very high levels and then this implementation is trickled down to relevant departments / developers.
I can see this happening. This is one of the biggest reasons I think product development needs to be close to the engineers. They understand it and understand the implications more than someone abstracted away from it. In an ideal world the engineers would also _care_ for the product too.
"Judge systems for their results, not their motives."
There's a third important concept: the process.
In this case, the process is pretty horrible -- the article's author has no idea what was wrong, and therefore can't remedy it. Similarly, since he doesn't know what's wrong, we can't criticize the process in any specific way, so the process can't be improved.
Comments
How does not one of their well paid engineers flag that this will obviously happen when implementing these features?
The engineer you're relying upon is not the engineer the tech industry optimizes for. The tech industry wants engineers who are not overly concerned with how the business will utilize the fruits of their labor. Ask difficult questions or push back against management too hard, and you're on your way out the door before you finish saying "With all due respect..."
It's hard to imagine if you haven't experienced it yourself. You think it should work that way. You push for it, but unless you fall into the right, group you may as well be a fart in the wind.
engineers implement what they are told to do, and decisions are made in upper management level. very likely this direction came from very high levels and then this implementation is trickled down to relevant departments / developers.
I can see this happening. This is one of the biggest reasons I think product development needs to be close to the engineers. They understand it and understand the implications more than someone abstracted away from it. In an ideal world the engineers would also _care_ for the product too.
They are overpaid do perform tasks as directed.
They don't care.
Judge systems for their results, not their motives.
"Judge systems for their results, not their motives."
There's a third important concept: the process.
In this case, the process is pretty horrible -- the article's author has no idea what was wrong, and therefore can't remedy it. Similarly, since he doesn't know what's wrong, we can't criticize the process in any specific way, so the process can't be improved.
We don't disagree :)